Originally published on the Jive Software website on May 18, 2016, featuring Dina Vekaria from Pearson.

Pearson is the world’s largest education company, with 40,000 employees in more than 70 countries helping people of all ages to make measurable progress in their lives through learning. The company provides a range of education products and services to institutions, governments and direct to individual learners, that help people everywhere aim higher and fulfill their true potential.

With such an expansive employee base, Pearson found it challenging to communicate and collaborate with employees outside of their direct regions. Six years ago, they selected Jive as their interactive intranet platform to deploy Neo—their company-wide community that they use to connect, collaborate and communicate daily to get their work done more effectively and efficiently.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Pearson’s community manager, Dina Vekaria, to ask her a few questions about how Jive’s Interactive Intranet solution has impacted the company and helps them work as one.

Pearson Community Manager, Dina Vekaria, Shares How Their Jive-Powered Interactive Intranet Has Changed the Way They Work

Jive: As a leader in the education space with thousands of employees around the world, can you share what Jive is to Pearson?

Dina: Jive is about our people. Neo, our Jive community, is One Pearson, enabling learning and collaboration for everyone in the Cloud. Whether it’s reading our CEO’s latest blog post about the work we’re doing in support of education in India or a colleague’s request for sock donations so they can deliver them to refugees who are in crisis, Jive empowers our people to connect, communicate and collaborate. Jive enables 40,000 colleagues to work together across the globe.

Jive: What are the top 3 benefits your company has experienced using Jive?

Dina: The transparency Jive has created in bridging the gap between our employees and our executive team means that everyone has a direct connection to all levels at Pearson. The conversations and debates taking place in our Jive community challenge the way we think and work. The gamification strategy allows us to reward our colleagues in four key areas:

participation with our global initiatives,

completing basic tasks on Neo as part of the onboarding process,

their company learning activities, and

the value they contribute to our community as decided by their colleagues.

Here are some of the badges we have in our Jive community:

Jive: What departments in your company utilize Jive and how?

Dina: One of the many business areas using Jive is our Legal department. Bjarne Tellmann, our SVP & General Counsel, uses Neo to share ideas with colleagues from across Pearson. He appreciates how posts can be configured to suit smaller or wider groups as appropriate. “I use Neo to update my team on new developments, share thoughts or ideas from books and podcasts, or share articles I have written and published elsewhere outside of Pearson,” Bjarne said. “I also use the comments to gauge how people are reacting to things. It’s a great tool.”

Jive: What has been Jive’s biggest impact on you, personally? How has it changed the way you work?

Dina: Jive helps me get my work done, literally! I was assigned a project to get some of our important help documents translated. I found a place within our community that specialises in Spanish learning and started a discussion asking for help. Mere hours later, a colleague responded that they would be happy to translate the content. Jive enabled me to reach out globally, saving time and money, and helped me create a new connection. The owner of the place was also impressed, saying, ”Amazing testimony to the power of Neo, when someone in the UK can get help from someone in Mexico through a place that was created by another employee in the U.S."

Dina: We’ve had Jive for nearly six years, and are an established, mature community that is great at bringing our colleagues in for communication and collaboration. Moving forward we plan to focus on creating communities of best practice. There have been organisational changes to our business and creating a clear map to the strategic communities within Jive is key. We also want to utilise gamification to drive good citizen behaviour and promote our global goals.